


The Shit Show

by RioRiley



Category: Captain America (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Amputation, Anorexia, Anxiety, Avengers Family, Cancer, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Depression, Domestic Avengers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Has Issues, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Terminal Illnesses, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2020-06-27 15:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 18,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19793638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RioRiley/pseuds/RioRiley
Summary: "As far as hospital roommates go, I certainly lucked out. There are no such thing as private rooms here, regardless of how many times I have bribed the nurses to get me my own room. But it could have been worse. There are plenty of people here, that would be worse roommates. None of the kids on the floor, are entirely awful, but I prefer spending time alone if given the choice between that and being around any of them."No powers Au, Where the avengers are all residents at a children's hospital.





	1. 1

As far as hospital roommates go, I certainly lucked out. There are no such thing as private rooms here, regardless of how many times I have bribed the nurses to get me my own room. But it could have been worse. There are plenty of people here, that would be worse roommates. None of the kids on the floor, are entirely awful, but I prefer spending time alone if given the choice between that and being around any of them.

We're on the residence floor. I'm 17, I've been here the longest, and place myself in charge. As far as the hierarchy goes, if like to think I'm on top. I've been living here for a year, since I was diagnosed with my heart condition. I'm on the transplant list, but my chances for actually recurving a donation are zero. Hearts aren't a readily available asset. 

Bucky, 16, is next door. He's the moody emo kid of the floor. I'm certain that if it wasn't for the chemotherapy they have him on, he would have long black hair, swept over his eyes like a skinny white kid at a warped tour. Nice kid though. He's here with osteosarcoma. It's a type of bone cancer, and it's already taken off his arm. He's got this gnarly steel prosthetic, and it admittedly looks pretty cool when he utilises it in a headbang to his music that he blasts much louder than hospital policy. We get away with a lot here. No one really wants to tell the kid who's just had his arm chopped off that he needs to turn down his music. 

Bucky is roomed with Steve, who is also 16, he's the new kid. Don't know much about him, other than that he's got the same type of shitshow cancer as Bucky has. He's a recent diagnose. Nick, the male nurse on the floor, thought it would be good for him to room with Bucky. As if by having the same cancer, Bucky would be able to show him the ropes, and help him get through everything. Having cancer isn't much like teaching someone how to drive though. Not that either of them have any experience behind the wheel anyways.

We're hardly old enough to drive. And while everyone else on the outside is learning, were all stuck here.

We've got two Peters on the floor, and someone had the bright idea to shove the two of them into the same room. Peter Parker,is the youngest, he's 14 and is the cooler of the two Peters. He's here with a brain tumor. It causes him to have a lot of seizures, so it's just safer for him to be living at the hospital where he can have around the clock medical care and treatment. He's a super smart kid. Swear he could build or invent anything and it would change the world. The real shame is that he of all people is the one with the tumor taking over his brain. Real shame.

Peter Quill is his roommate. He's 17 and has Cystic Fibrosis, which means there's basically a shitton of muccous in his lungs, and it's just constantly clogging shit up or whatever. Don't really know. Never really gotten along with him. Admittedly, I've never really tried to get along with him. I'll work on it. 

Wanda Maximoff is down the hall. She's an anorexic. Sweet girl. She's 16 years old. She'd do anything to make anyone feel better, and knows better than anyone I have ever met when people need a shoulder to cry on. She's incredibly empathetic, and very considerate. Has a lot going on mentally though, since her brother died a few months ago.

Natasha is with her. She's 16 too. They're the only two girls on the floor. She's my best friend. She's got leukemia. But she's super cool about it. She hates when people pity her, and she's always the first to welcome new "cancer kids", as she calls them, to the "egghead club." She switches through dozens of wigs. It's her way of expressing herself, between red, brown, and bleach blonde wigs. She insists purple however, is her natural color, but the last time she went in for her driver's license, she was bald, and put down "nude" for her hair color. She's full of sarcastic things like that. It's why we get along as well as we do.

Bruce is my roommate. He's the oldest of our group. He's almost 18. He's quiet. I've heard he's super smart, and that he's apparently one of the greatest minds of my generation, but I don't have anything to back that up with, considering he hasn't so much as moved in the two months he's been here. He had some crazy lab accident, and has been comatose since. He's got a girlfriend, who comes to visit him I swear every other day. She's the one I've found every thing out about him from. Says he was on his way to MIT. That his favorite movie is inception, which must mean he's smart because that movie could make anyone's head explode.

I'm Tony. 

Welcome to the shit show.


	2. Chapter 2

The day I found out something was wrong was nothing special. It wasn't raining, or snowing. The wind wasn't blowing. There were enough clouds in the sky, that not a damn thing about the weather was memorable. I remember everything from that morning. All of the last "befores" I would have. Everything after that morning, was an "after". After I was diagnosed. After I found out that I needed to find a way to get a heart replacement, while everyone else in my class was figuring out how to hide alcohol from their parents. 

Before, started at about nine in the morning that day. I had gotten up a lot earlier than usual, considering that it was fall break. Teachers at school had some mandatory state teaching conference. I had gotten up, and I remember thinking that life was going okay. My dad had been more accepting of me as a general screw up, and had come to accept the fact that I simply wasn't going to accomplish anything in life. His company was doing well. My mom, was as sweet as ever. And the fact that my dad was pleased with me at that point, meant she did too. 

So I'm sitting there out at breakfast, at a little diner down the street. It was one of those old fashioned fake diners, metal building and all. I was there, by myself that morning, eating a plate of pancakes, eggs and bacon, and I remember all of the sudden my chest hurt like hell. My pulse was going super quick, and I could swear I could hear my pulse in my ears like it was on a loudspeaker. My chest hurt. I couldn't breathe, and my vision was blurry, and then, everything went black.

The nice waitress there, came and saw me in the hospital. Said I passed out, and landed hard on the mint green tile floor. 

Everything since the mint green tile is after. 

After, when I woke up in the cold white hospital. After, as I sat there listening to the doctor explain that regardless of the fact that at that point I was only 16, my heart wasn't "performing". If only I could fix those performance issues with a little blue pill. That even though my heart had only been doing it's damn job for sixteen years, it was giving up. That I needed to find a replacement because it was essentially walking off the job and quitting without so much as a two week notice.

After, when for the first time in my entire life, I saw my old man cry. Sitting there listening to the fact that I needed a new heart, and just how unlikely it was that I was going to get one. Because it's a long waiting list, and I was now at the bottom of it. The doctor explaining that he could find a way to get me higher on the list, based on my age and otherwise decent health, but that my chances still weren't good. 

My dad, pulling my mom into his chest, as reality set in that chances are pretty good that she was going to watch me die. That my mom was going to see me laying in some cold oak box, that she was going to have to pick out a tie to have me buried in. That she'd see me laying there, cold as can be, face a little swollen, with way too much makeup on. 

As for me, I was laying there, trying to understand what the doctor was saying. He wasn't using an awful lot of big words. Logically nothing he was saying was something the day before I would have been confused by. But sitting there, it was like he was speaking in French. And dammit, I've never liked french. 

"So I'm dying?" I asked abruptly.

"Not necessarily. I was explaining the transplant waiting list. You still have a chance Tony, we just have to wait for you to move higher on the list, and for a donor to be available that matches you." The doctor, some tight faced British man named Dr. Coulson, explained to my parents. That was one of the things that I remember bothering me. Regardless of if I asked the man a question, he always answered it to my parents. Pissed me the hell off.

"So what do we do in the meantime?" My sweet mother, Maria, had asked.

"The safest thing for Tony is going to be for him to stay here. We can provide around the clock care. The nurses on the residence floor, have a lot of experience with transplant waiters." Coulson said.

"Do they have experience with 16 year olds needing a new heart?" I had asked, full of sarcasm.

"Well, no." Coulson had admitted quietly.

"Sounds great." I said, pumping my first in the air, which earned a thump from my father. That was the first time I had felt someone touch me since waking up, and it was my father hitting me.

That's how I got here. It's been almost a year, and I've moved up a few spots on the list. I think, most of the people who got off the list for off by dying, rather than by receiving their transplant, but it's the same difference. I'm higher now. My chances, are a little bit better than they were when I was diagnosed. Because of the numbers, but my theory is that unless someone qualified to donate a heart drops dead inside this hospital, I'm not getting one. 

The thing about the residence floor, is that no one stays forever. None of the people that were on the floor when I got in, are here anymore. They either died, or got better. And most of them, if they were sick enough to end up on the floor, left dead.

I remember when each of the people here now came in. 

Bucky, came right after he had been diagnosed with Osteosarcoma in Queens. The hospital there hadn't been qualified to treat him. He got here, and they straightaway started him on chemotherapy. Because of how strong the medications were that the doctors were giving him, it was only after a few days of chemotherapy that his hair started coming out. I remember being in my room, and I could hear him singing from Simple Plan, singing "I'm just a kid and my life is a nightmare." The next time I saw him, he had shaved his head and covered it with a black and white checkered Vans beanie. 

Quill is here needing a lung transplant. I guess that at some point cystic fibrosis fucks up your lungs enough that you need new ones, but new ones won't take away the cf. Just gives him longer until the new set is used up. You'd think that based on the fact that were both on a transplant list we would have some mystical transplant seeking bond, but it doesn't work like that. I'm a lot more serious than he is, and that's saying something, because I'm not really that serious. He just doesn't do anything logical. I can't take it.

Parker, had a hell of a time getting here. He's only been here for about a month and a half. He had been on a field trip to DC, literally in the Lincoln Memorial, when he just dropped against the concrete, and had a seizure. They took him to the nearest emergency room, driving them there on a school bus, because his debate teacher knew his aunt couldn't afford to have him ride in an ambulance. They got him there, and the doctors all figured he had just had the seizure from being too active on the trip, and ran an MRI as a precautionary measure, and that's when they found the tumor. The way it's positioned, there's nothing any doctor can do about it. It's only going to get bigger until it eventually kills him. Which sucks. It sucks that Peter has to die. Because he's a damn good kid.

Wanda's choice was between staying here and at a treatment center specifically for people with eating disorders. Her mom is nuts I guess, and had this theory that she would shape up fast if she was around people who had "real problems" then she would forget the depression, forget the anorexia, and never puke again. She's been here three months, and maybe has gained five pounds. Putting her to 95. She should be around 130, is what Nick is always saying. He's a loud son of a bitch. And my room is right across from the nurses station, so I can generally hear everything he has to say about everyone on the floor. He has a lot to say. But I think deep down, he's the one keeping us all sane. He acts like the black uncle who's had more than a few stays in jail, but at the end of the day he cares more than anyone. 

Natasha is probably here to die too. She used to come in periodically for her treatments, but like three weeks ago, she came in after she started vomiting copious amounts of blood, and I guess that's bad news when your blood is full of cancer. She's the best. Super upbeat. And hell I wish all the girls I have ever known were as cool as her. She's the type of girl who will show up in my room, and straight up just sit on my bed and keep ice cream by my nose until the pure scent of hospital sherbet awakens me with it's sugar free splendor. 

Bruce, has been here for two months. Not much else to go on there, since you know, he doesn't do anything. Just sleeps. I've heard that at four months, they'll pull the plug.

Death is inevitable.

It just comes quicker here.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve came in yesterday after being diagnosed with a late stage Osteosarcoma in his leg. From what I overheard Nick saying, he had been in the process of getting into the army, and during one of the medical exams, they ran a CT scan, which Nick says is normal for the military to do, and that's when they found it. Slashed any chance he had of getting in the army. Nick said Steve was more upset about not being able to enlist than he was about having cancer. Which sounds brave but I think it's a load of bullshit, considering he's about to have most of his leg chopped off.

Nick came into my room this morning with my bright and early medication cocktail, and started rambling on about how the least I can do is introduce myself to Steve. But that's not my style. I don't introduce myself. Everyone I associate with already knows who I am. They introduce themselves. I take it upon myself to never remember their names, and here comes fury, waltzing in his Tweety Bird scrub shirt, demanding I go over and, what, give him a welcome fruit basket? Sorry about your cancer, is there anything, anything at all, I can do to help?.

"Stark, you're going to be here awhile. You might as well make friends with your new neighbor." Nick says, frustrated. 

"He looks like a prick." I say under my breath. "there's not a chance we are going to get along."

"If you don't go, I'll make you escort him to his treatments." Nick says, raising the eyebrow over his eye, which I may have failed to mention up until this point, is covered with an eye patch. I hear he lost his eye to a cat. 

"Wouldn't it make more sense to have Barnes escort him?" I ask, rolling my eyes.

"Sure would. But he needs more friends than just his roommate. And besides, Barnes has completely ignored the kid since he got here. Apparently he's not in the mood to be hospitable." Nick says belligerently. 

"What do I get out of it if I do go?" I ask 

"Best case scenario, a friend. He seems like someone who would put up with your stubborn ass shit." Nick says, still full of attitude.

I roll my eyes again, and grab my IV pole. There's a huge heart monitor on the pole, that I have to be hooked up to at all times, except in the shower. Anyways, so grab that, slide into my nike sandals, which ill have you know look great paired with the blue no slip hospital socks, and head out of my room, before walking in next door, to the swamp.

Bucky has always referred to his room as the swamp. Makes him feel punk rock I guess, and the intermittent vomit scents that come out of there could certainly be mistaken for swamp scents anyways. 

Bucky has his Vans beanie on when I walk in, and he's blasting Check Yes Juliet, from We The Kings, both of which were all the rage in 2007, but it's definitely not 2007 anymore. 

Resident kids, hell we'll say Rez, just to make things easy, usually decorate our hospital rooms. It makes the shit show a little more glamorous, and makes things feel more like home. Most of us have our blankets from home brought in, as an added touch. Bucky has his half of the room in an emo wonderland, nothing but shades of black and grey, with the occasional pop of color brought from either a flashing hospital mechanism, or a poster from one of his warped tour bands. Right now he's going through some intense withdrawals from warped because I guess the last ever show is happening this weekend in California, and Bucky is insistent that he should be there. Across the country, rocking out. There's not a chance of that happening though. It's his chemo weekend.

Steve is on the side of the swamp closest to the window, probably because natural light would kill Bucky's vibe. His side is still the standard sterile hospital white, which is a deep contrast to the emo side of the room. He's got an American flag pinned to his iv pole.

That's lame as hell, but hey whatever.

I sit down softly on the edge of his all too white hospital bed, and he doesn't even look at me.

And I'm sitting there looking at him, and he's gigantic. Like this kid is full of muscle and looks like the kind of guy my father wanted for a son. A part of me is jealous, you know? Because he looks perfect. And that's when I notice his fingers playing with the little hospital band around his wrist. He's shaking.

"Hey… you know it's okay to be scared right?" I say quietly. 

And they aren't the words that I expect you know? Hell those words aren't even something I act on. I would never admit to a damn soul how absolutely scared I am all the time, I have never been raised to think it's okay to be scared. Dad was always the kind of guy who preached to concept of Manning up. Just rub some dirt in it and move on with life. I don't even think my dad allowed me to cry as a baby. And shit, I certainly wouldn't ever expect to tell someone else they can be scared. What kind of advice is that coming from me?

And then he moves forward in his bed, and hugs me.

For like, a long time. 

And when he pulls away there's freaking boogers on my sweatshirt, and I don't even care because this kid in front of me looks like a puppy that just got kicked in the face. And damn it sets in just how scared this kid might be. He was mentally prepared to go right against Korea or whatever. He was ready to go fight for his country, and that's honorable you know? That's like the wet dream for parents that their kid will do something as good as that. Hell that would have been dad's wet dream. But he doesn't get to go fight for his country, he has to stay back here and fight against himself. Fight cancer. And that must suck ass.

"Hey. I'm Tony." I say, introducing myself.

"Steve." Steve says quietly.

"You're going to be okay Steve." I say quietly. That's a bitch ass lie though, because getting your leg cut off like he's going to in a couple weeks is far from okay.

Steve nods. Which is an appropriate response to being lied to, I suppose.

"What's your schedule like?" I ask, trying to make things easier for the guy.

"I start chemo today." Steve says quietly.

And hell I would be scared about that shit too. Chemotherapy is the ringleader of this shit show at the hospital. And it's horrible. It does things to people you can't even imagine. Steve would be better off as a prisoner of war than on the chemotherapy treatment that they are going to have him on.

"Can I come with ya? I bet you could use some company." I say quietly.

"Yeah. Yeah, you can come. Thanks." Steve says.


	4. Chapter 4

I've been to the infusion room more than a few times. Never to get anything pumped into me, knock on wood, but I can't count the number of times I've been here to sit with someone, since I got here. Steve's different though. Most of the people who get sent here with cancer, have had it for a little while. Peter had done treatments at other hospitals before coming here, so had Bucky and Nat. But Steve, is brand new. He's not some unlucky kid who has had such a shit life that he doesn't even flinch when the nurses poke and prod him. He's not used to the way the chemotherapy feels when they hook it up to his veins. He doesn't know what to expect, or how it's going to feel later when his stomach feels like a warzone, and weeks from now, when his hair will inevitably fall out around the same time the doctors here take the liberty of cutting off his leg. And I'll be damned if I am going to let him do any of that alone. 

His first treatment is scheduled for after lunch. 

It's not particularly eventful at first. I walk with him to the infusion room, the nurses are there waiting for us. Waiting for him. He takes a seat in the plushy blue reclining chair, closest to the window. I sit down in the empty reclining chair next to him. And then I just kinda sit there and watch for a while. Peggy, who is in charge of the infusions, takes a sterile alcohol wipe, and runs it over the surgically implanted port, right above Steve's right peck, the port barely looks passable as healing. The stitches are still in it, over the top. But, she still utilizes it. Might as well, you know, use that hardware they have planted under his skin.

He flinches before she has even stabbed him. Literally as soon as she takes the needle, which if I'm honest, isn't even a big needle compared to what I've seen them stab other people with here. She hooks a separate iv up to his arm, that one pumping him with painkillers and anti nausea medication. Then she grabs the IV, the one that's actually connected to the yellow biohazard bag on the pole, and she hooks it up to the port in his chest. I can see it in his eyes as soon as the shit starts getting in him. I've heard from everyone here that the feeling of the chemotherapy pumping into you for the first time is an indescribable misery. 

"Are you ready, Mr. Rogers?" Peggy asks professionally.

Steve shakes his head. At least he's honest with her. 

Peggy sits down in a little chair across from him for a few minutes. That's protocol. The nurses have to stick around for the first little bit to make sure he's reacting appropriately to the medication and that he isn't coincidentally allergic to it or something. He's not though, and it's not long before she leaves.

"Hey. Talk to me bud." I say quietly, after Steve has kept his eyes tightly shut for a little longer than I'm comfortable with. 

"It hurts like hell." Steve says quietly. His arms are shaking.

"If you tell the nurses it's this bad, they can hook you up to a different drug, or just give you something to take more of the edge off." I say quietly. 

"No. It's fine. I'll keep going." Steve says, braving through shit like a real Patriot.

"Tell me about yourself. What are your parents like?" I ask.

"Dead." Steve says quietly. "been gone a few years now. They'd hate to see me like this." 

That explains things a little more. Normally when kids come here to stay, their parents really hover over them the first few days. I had been wondering why no one had been by to check on him. It explains too, why his part of his room is so barren. Willing to bet that flag is one of the only things Steve can call his own. I text my mom, explaining the situation and asking her to do me a solid and go pick out some things for him at Target to make his room a little less intimidating. Give him some things of his own. Things that are just his. Not things passed from foster kid to kid, or blankets that are washed and distributed who knows where in the hospital. Things that have never belonged to anyone else. Just Steve. 

My mom is always down for a shopping trip.

Pinterest is like her home away from home, so I'm willing to bet she can utilize my father's millions of dollars in the bank, and make something for Steve. Modern Americana I told her. 

"I have been in state custody for a while. And when I got sick, I guess this is what the state thought would be the best thing for me." Steve says.

"What did you used to do? Like hobbies?" I ask.

"I'm not as tough as I look, that's for sure. I love drawing. Any art really, but just sketching is my favorite." Steve says with a weak smile.

"What do you mostly sketch?" I ask

"The people around me." Steve says. "I like drawing the expressions on peoples faces."

I pull a funny face, sticking out my tongue. "You should draw me sometime." I say, with a wink.

"Just might have to if you can hold that last pose for a little while." Steve says laughing. 

Halfway through Steve's treatment, Nat comes in for hers. The nurses usually overlap the treatments so that there is constantly one of us in here. She looks sicker than usual today. She hasn't put on any makeup, and while she normally will put on an outrageous wig, the bright red one with the bangs is my personal favorite, today she's just bald. The kind of bald where a professional sick person can tell you're in the depths of your treatment, because she literally doesn't have any hair left, and there is no new hair beginning to grow. Eyelashes: gone. Eyebrows: gone. I hear even the hair on your legs goes. 

"What's up?" Nat says, giving one of those bro head nods to Steve. He's got his eyes glued to her head, as if he is mentally preparing himself for his reflection to look like that soon. No amount of preparation is going to really work though. "You can feel it if you want to." Natasha says, nervously. Steve nods, and softly runs his fingers over her scalp.

"It's soft." Steve comments.

Nat takes good care of her head. Says it's the most high maintenance hairstyle she's ever had, because she has to loofah it in the shower, and put on lotion all over, and spray perfume on it to make sure it smells good. She's the only one here who never smells like the hospital. She consistently smells like that cheap Brittany Spears fantasy perfume that smells like fancy cotton candy or something. I like it.

Steve runs his thumb over all the bumps on her head.

That's the other thing. We have this concept that our heads are all nicely shaped and like perfectly round and stuff, but as someone who is surrounded by plenty of bald people, such is not the case. Our heads are lumpy. There are divots, and bumps. Never seen a smooth skull. 

Steve takes away his hand and then he throws up.

"Well, that's the first time I've gotten that reaction." Nat says with a sympathetic smile.

"Congrats on your first chemo puke." I say.

Nat isn't even offended. She just starts rubbing his back, little circles like all of our moms used to do to comfort us when we were little. I find the little blue baggie they they are giving us all to puke in now. The baggie doesn't make sense by the way. Pink kidney dishes were a lot more Eco friendly considering they were reusable. But I hear the blue ones are made from water bottles or some shit. Hope the turtles like that.

Tasty, right?


	5. Chapter 5

I have this theory that I shouldn't be legally obligated to attend school when I am a resident at the children's hospital, but the government firmly believes otherwise. The hospital is legally required to provide the rez kids with what they call educational assistants, but are really just tutors in scrubs. We do the hospital homeschool program every weekday, and it sucks, big, hairy, balls. I always have to go. I have yet to get the medical clearance to miss any class. Neither has Wanda. We're the regulars here. The dependable students, if you will. The other kids, they have really fluctuating attendance. Given that most of the other kids have immune systems that are literally shit, they get out of class for so much as having a fever. 

I'm not jealous at all though.

Like I'm genuinely glad I'm not in any of their positions. I'd gladly die of a random ass heart condition than have to endure cancer treatment, let alone have to fight that shit. Steve's been doing the chemo for a week now. He's already started losing weight. And he just looks super tired all the time. But still, if I saw him walking down the street, I would never guess that he's as sick as he is. I would never guess that he's got cancer. I would never guess that he's getting his whole damn leg chopped off next week.

Bruce never has to go either. But as much as I used to joke about wanting to take a several week long nap, I can't find it in me to be jealous of him either.

Today Bucky's the only one absent. I'll have to stop by and check on him later. He's usually pretty consistent about going. We always sit in the back, and crack jokes during class while the educational assistant tries to hopelessly teach us unnecessary information about Shakespeare.

Listen, I have nothing against Shakespeare. Decent dude, even though I firmly believe that his work is overrated, and not quite as good as everyone keeps insisting. But, I have nothing against him. The thing is, were here, just kids, trying to survive. That's our main goal here. Just survive. To be able to wake up each morning knowing that whatever health issue we have may be kicking our collective asses, but at least whatever we have hasn't killed us quite yet. So I have a hard time giving a shut about Romeo and Juliet. Damn I wish, that unrequited love was my biggest issue in life. Hell, every kid in this room, wishes love was their biggest issue. Our biggest issue here is dying. And it's a very real issue. And for most of the kids here, it's going to come sooner rather than later.

So, boo hoo, Romeo and Juliet. Take cancer for a spin. Let's see how well you handle that.

After class is over, I head into the swamp. Bucky's there, and he's lying on his bed. His arm, clearly the fake metal one, is laying on his nightstand. He looks fine. Well, fine considering all the circumstances.

"Sluffer." I say quietly, after entering his room.

Bucky let's out one of those laughs that isn't really a laugh at all, it's just him breathing a little harder for a moment out of his nose. "I don't feel good." He says with a shrug.

"Join the club." I say with a smirk.

Bucky sits up straighter to look at me. 

"My cancer spread." Bucky says quietly. "I went in for my scans this morning, thinking that I was going to finally get my no evidence of disease scan, and it just lit up. The cancers everywhere." Bucky says, broken.

"So, is this the end of the line?" I ask, quietly, with a near reverent tone.

Bucky nods.

"Strange says that I could have weeks, but if things go south I could be gone in days." Bucky says. Now he's sobbing. I climb into his bed next to him, the side where his arms gone, which makes for extra space, as horrible as that probably sounds. As soon as I'm next to him, his head falls into my shoulder, and his arm wraps around me. 

Bucky's always had this warped conception, that he's gotta act tough. He never lets anyone know when he's hurting, the nurses literally just watch his heart rate to know when to give him something. And I have this theory that maybe it's just a guy thing. To never cry in front of people, and if you should happen to, you have this urge to apologize. And not just apologize once, but whenever you remember that you happened to show you were hurt, or that you were sad. It's super toxic. 

"So what's your plan for this?" I ask, after wiping the snot off his face with his blanket.

"Die." Bucky says with sarcastic determination.

"Before that." I say, rolling my eyes.

"Strange says I should look into the Make a Wish foundation. Meet John Cena or something." Bucky says with a sad smile.

"You could probably use that and guilt some of your warped bands into doing a little something for you." I suggest.

Bucky shrugs.

"I bet we could convince one of the nurses to let us take their car down the street to grab a Mountain Dew from the gas station?" I say.

Bucky nods.

"My parents are coming tonight, so I can't be gone too long." I say. Tonight's when they are bringing all the stuff for Steve's room, and I want to be there when he sees it. I want to be there so that he knows that I care, and that it's not just me spending my dad's money recklessly. 

Bucky doesn't have a hard time convincing Dr. Strange to let us take his car. Considering Strange told him a couple hours ago that his entire body is basically made up of cancer now, he kind of owes him one. And sure that was probably pretty shitty of us to hold that against Strange, and use that against him to get a joyride to the gas station, but hey, who cares.

The feeling of having Strange's car keys was oddly liberating. Bucky's the one driving, which is only fair since he's the one who's dying. 

So, we drive on down to the 7-11, each of us carrying a purse type thing that holds the contents of our IVs, because we can't just casually ditch those whenever. Bucky parks the Challenger outside, and we go in, like kids in a candy store who somehow not only convinced Strange to give us his car but also his debit card. And we load up. Mountain Dew. Doritos. Red bull, for Bucky because I know we'll enough that that's a bad idea for my heart. Sour patch watermelons. Everything we can think of. 

It feels nice to do shit that everyone else our age is doing. 

We decide to keep the car a little longer and go drive around for a bit. So,Bucky turns the other way,going away from the hospital,and towards our supposed freedom. Bucky turns left out of the parking lot. There's a semi truck parked on the right side, so we can't quite clearly see the incoming traffic, but hell what do either of us have to lose? So he just guns it. One of those if we die we die situations. He turns, I hear the engine rev, and watch as we collide with what my gut knows is my parents car, while both of us are going, a lot faster than we should.

There's an awful sound of metal screeching. Crushing. People screaming. One of them has to be my mother, as I watch her fly through the windshield, meaning she wasn't wearing a seatbelt as per usual. My dad, is laying limp, on the road in front of us, which must mean he went through the windshield first.

There's more screaming. I know it's mine. It's Bucky's. He's screaming and panicking, and crying and apologizing, because he knows that he has just killed my parents.

My chest hurts.

My soul hurts.

My parents are dead.


	6. Chapter 6

The next time I see Bucky, my parents have been dead for a week, and I've been to what will without a doubt be the worst funeral in my entire life. The funeral itself was beautiful. Mom and Dad's money ensured that it would be an extravagant event. The awful part about it, was the fact that it was happening. The fact that they were dead. The fact that I didn't have the chance to tell them I loved them before I died. All I called them for was to get Steve some shit. To ask for money. I didn't tell my mother I loved her when I ended the call. I didn't tell them thank you. And they're dead.

And I'm pissed.

I'm pissed, because yeah, the natural order of things is that the kids are the ones who watch their parents die but I think the general idea is that happens when kids are a lot older and even then they aren't supposed to die at the same time. And the kid isn't supposed to be in the car that kills them. 

I've been on "home release" the past week. For the funeral and everything. But it's not home release when my mother isn't there to make that house a home. 

So, I walk into the waiting room, because Steve's in his big surgery, and Bucky's there. He glances up at me and immediately looks at the ground. He's afraid to make eye contact. And I doubt that he expects me to do anything other than punch him right in the face. Or even just hit him when I get close. I know he doesn't. Because he braces himself, ready to take whatever physical abuse I am willing to give. That makes me cringe. Seeing his muscles tense up thinking I'm going to punch him. He knows he deserves it. He's ready and willing to take whatever I give him without fighting back. He's ready and I have this perfect opportunity to do whatever the hell I want to do to him.

I hug him. 

I'd thought it out over the past week. Thought about how I was going to react when I saw Bucky again. Thought about all the things I could do to him. Thought about punching him. Contemplated killing him, if I'm honest. But none of those ideas really lasted long. I understand that he didn't mean to. I understand it was not only a freak accident, but a horrible coincidence that my parents were in that car. I know he has to feel horrible.

I hug him.

And it's the best feeling in the planet, because it's what we both need. It's warm and it's genuine. And hell we need each other, but more than anything else he needs to know I don't hate his freaking guts. He needs to know I don't think it's his fault that my parents are gone. That I don't blame him.

I hug him, and I can feel how tired he is. How weak he is. How sad he is. 

"Buck, it's okay." I say.

Bucky is doing the kind of cry where he's hiccupping and there are boogers all over the place. He's sniffling. He's wheezing. The whole nine yards. 

"Tony.. I'm so sorry." Bucky says, his heart broken.

"It's okay Buck. I'm not mad at you. At all. I'm glad that you're okay honestly." I say, rubbing his shoulders. 

Steve is in surgery for three more hours after that. Bucky and I do a lot of talking in that time. We talk about the funeral. How hard it was to speak at it in front of all those people. How messed up it was how many people that hadn't seen my parents in years, said they missed them, even though they had made no real effort to see them until this point. How many people told me they were sorry for my loss, but worse, the people who wouldn't even talk to me, wouldn't even look at me, because they couldn't come up with anything to say. I would have rather them lied and say they will do anything that I need them to, or throw out that they are here for me. I would have rather them shake my hand, than just pretend I don't exist, or act like I'm dead alongside them, even though I certainly wish that I was. 

Then Strange comes out. Surgery was a success. He thinks he got all the cancer out, and the rest should go away throughout time with radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Chopped it off about six inches beneath his hip. Which means that if he should choose to use a prothstetic he's going to have to figure out how to use the prosthetic knee. Which I hear is hell. Like sure getting your limb chopped off in any capacity sucks, but having to learn how to use a robot knee, and teach yourself how to bend it at the right times, sucks ass. Bucky hated using his arm for the first while because it was so hard to maneuver the elbow alongside the hand. Eventually he got used to it, but he still chooses to just not use the arm and sport the stump whenever possible. It's a lot more difficult for Steve to just opt out of using the leg, because if he does he basically has to use a wheelchair or crutches, whereas Bucky can kind of get away with just going one armed in most situations.

They make us wait about an hour before we can go see him, in the ICU for recovery. And when we get there, he just looks blank. Numb. Like nothing else matters anymore.

"I had this theory that maybe they would cut me open, and figure out that it wasn't even cancer, and just see me up and send me on my way." Steve says quietly.

"What did you expect them to find, Skittles?" Nick asks with a short laugh.

And I feel bad for Steve.

I go over to Steve's bed, and man, he looks like shit. Like I'm used to seeing people here hooked up to a billion machines, with a shit load of wires everywhere, but this is even more than usual. That, and there's this awful eerie feeling, looking at the nice, flat, perfectly smoothed out blanket, where Steve's leg is meant to be. 

"You're going to be okay." I say quietly. 

"I know." Steve says, just above a whisper. 

"I'm here for you Stevie. Getting the chop sucks man, but I need you to understand that you're not alone. I know how you're feeling and it sucks, I know it sucks, but you have to be honest with people about how you feel so that they can help you. We all want to help you." Bucky says, sitting on the empty side of Steve's bed where the leg should be. Bucky fills up the empty space.

"Thanks buck." Steve says, slowly and quietly, still feeling some of the effects of the anesthesia.

"I'm here for you Steve. Til the end of the line." Bucky says.

Not everyone's "line" is the same length. I saw this poem once, that was talking about the line on a headstone. Between the year someone was born, and the year they die. That little line, is their entire life. That line is everything they have ever done. Every day. Every moment. Every triumph. Every regret. That little line is everything. It's everything they ever were, and will be. And then that line ends. It ends with a number that's coming way too soon for some people. It's funny, that when you walk through a cemetery, a baby who died three months after being born, isn't going to have a shorter line than an old man who died in his sleep at one hundred and four. It's the same line. And it comes for all of us eventually. Eventually, everyone's line ends. And i guess the point in life is how you spend your dash. How you spend your line. 

"Til the end of the line." Steve says with a weak smile. 

We're there, on Steve's line, and near the end of Bucky's line, later on in the week when were sitting in Steve and Bucky's bathroom, shaving Steve's hair away. It's funny, I'm just getting to the point where I can grow a real beard, so is Steve, and here he is losing all his hair to basic poison. So I take the little nose hair electric trimmer from my bathroom and shave some ridiculous edges and curves into my beard. Just for the hell of it. Steve thinks is awesome. Bucky thinks I look absolutely pathetic.

Bucky, looks like shit, by the way. He's in pain, almost constantly. And I don't think he admits to just how bad he's feeling. 

His line will end sooner than I would like it to.


	7. Chapter 7

It's like three in the morning on a Tuesday, when I wake up to a sudden knock at my door. I automatically assume the worst, that Nick's knocking, to tell me that Bucky has died. But when I get up, Bucky's there, using a wheelchair, because he's gotten plain exhausted. He's all dressed, with a jacket, that the Warped Tour founder, Kevin Lyman, sent him from the final show. He's got his checkered Vans beanie on his head, with his checked vans on his feet. The true white and black ones, he always points out. Most of the checked ones are an off white cream color. 

"Is this your ghost form?" I ask with a laugh.

"Better the fuck not be, I expect to be perfected as a ghost. Long hair, two arms, and no cancer." Bucky says with his signature smile. "Steve's been up sick all night, and I told him that if he stopped throwing up than we would take him to our spot on the roof." 

"You bribed him to try and get him to stop puking?" I ask smiling.

"It sounds bad when you say it like that." Bucky says with a short laugh. "Everyone's coming." 

"Well I'm only going because you are." I say, putting my hand on his shoulder.

"Is the staff going to be okay with all of us going?" I ask

"Nick said it would give the staff all a good rest." Bucky says. And deep down, I think that Nick, and all of the rest of us know that this will probably be our goodbye to Bucky.

I push Bucky's wheelchair to the elevator, with Steve close behind in another chair being pushed by Wanda. When we get to the roof, everyone else is already up there, wearing warm pajamas, with blankets around their shoulders. They all look like hell, for different reasons. But they look like hell nonetheless. Bucky, he looks the worst. 

You know how we talked about lines and shit? Bucky's getting to the end of his line pretty quick here. And you never really know how long you have until the line is just over. And you don't get to know, especially when you're sick, how many of those days that you have left are going to be good days. Bucky has a lot of bad moments now. He's really sick. He's in a lot of pain. And he spends a lot of time just sleeping. Nick says that that means he's getting close. That pretty quick, Bucky is going to fall asleep, and that will just be it.

I didn't know it, that night, when we were sitting there on the balcony, but that was going to be one of his very last good nights. I'm glad it was a good one.

The roof, is a resident exclusive area. Like a VIP club or something. The hospital has provided this nice lawn furniture and stuff, and there are a few trees that are in pots. They even have little lights strung from the balcony to the wall, like something that you'd see on every teenage girls dream house board on Pinterest. It looks nice. And it has this almost like home feel to it. It's the closest anything in the hospital feels to home. 

Everyone is sitting quietly, looking over the balcony, at the city lights. Half of these kids haven't even been in the city. A lot of them got shipped straight to the hospital when they got sick and haven't left since. And hell, it's not like it turned out well when any of us did leave, considering my parents both died in the process. 

Bucky's sitting in his chair, and I'm squatting next to him, on his level. 

"I'm going to really miss you." Bucky says out of nowhere.

"You're not going anywhere Buck. No need to miss me." I say, trying to hold onto my composure.

Bucky smiles. 

"I always thought I would win this fight. I never, not for even a second, thought that this would kill me." Bucky says.

"Bucky, you did your best." Natasha says. She kisses his forehead.

"No, because if I'd done my best, I wouldn't be dying." Bucky says, heartbroken.

"It's not like it was your choice." Peter Quill says with a smile. "If it had been up to you I'm sure you would have kicked your cancer in the ass long before now."

"Buck, I've seen a lot of sick people, and none of them were anywhere near as brave as you. No offense to the rest of you." Peter Parker says awkwardly.

"None taken." I say with a smile.

"I think you've still got a little bit of line left." Steve says.

And Bucky's sobbing. "I just, I thought I would get to live my life for a while. I thought I would be able to travel. Find a nice girl, settle down, have a family. But I don't fucking get any of that and damnit it's not fair, but I just need you all to know that I wanted it. I need you to know that I tried and that me dying isn't the same as me giving up." Bucky rambles. 

I stand up, and in front of his chair, pulling him into a long hug. "Bucky, you lived a good life. Just because you didn't have a long life doesn't mean it wasn't a good one."

Bucky nods. 

"I just want you all to know that I cared, and that I'm thankful for each of you." Bucky says, heartbroken.

"Bucky, we all love you." Wanda says with a smile. " I fully expect you to find a way to haunt all of us." She says laughing.

"Oh, I will. I'll find a way to keep annoying all of you for a very long time." Bucky says, and we all laugh. 

Most of the people there that night never see Bucky again. The next morning, the hospital puts him onto hospice care. And Bucky, spends a good amount of time, begging them not to make him die in the ICU. And they don't have it in them to argue with him. He's not asking much. Just saying he would rather die in the bed that's been his for the past while, being helped by the nurses he's used to, around the patients he knows, than have to go and die somewhere unfamiliar.

Steve is scared shitless. He came into Bucky's room, when he checked in at the hospital, thinking he was going to have some sort of cancer mentor. That Bucky would show him the ropes. Show him how to survive. Show him how to beat cancer. But instead he's watching him die. He's watching the cancer eat away at his body. He's seeing first hand, just how horrible and awful, dying from cancer is. 

Four nights before Bucky ends up dying, I trade Steve beds. He hasn't been sleeping well, and he's afraid, sleeping in there. He's afraid of what's happening to Bucky. He's horrified, as he listens and watches just how much pain Bucky is in and sits wondering if in no time, that's going to be him. If he's going to be there, crying out in pain each night, waiting for his line to end. 

And I figure out that Steve isn't exaggerating. It's scary, being in there at night with Bucky. It's hard, watching him in pain, knowing that the strongest medications that the hospital has to offer, are only taking the edge off of his pain. It's hard, laying in bed, pretending to be asleep, so that he doesn't know that I can hear him crying. It's hard, watching his parents leave the hospital each night. Each time they leave, they look at him, afraid that it's going to be the last time they see him. And it sucks, because they aren't being over dramatic. Each time they leave him, really could be the last time. 

It's two AM, on a Thursday. And Bucky is crying. And it's the first time that I don't pretend to be asleep, and just ignore him, because I thought it would help him hold on to the shreds of dignity that he has left. I get up out of my bed, and climb into his. A few days ago, I would have taken extra precautions, to make sure I didn't jostle him around, because I was afraid of causing him any more pain. But now, everything hurts Bucky. Aoni just move quick, settling down so that he can get "comfortable" or as comfortable as possible I suppose. I wrap my arms around him, and he's in so much pain that he is white knuckling his black bed sheets. He's bony, his chin, digs into my shoulder, and I swear I can feel each of his ribs individually, but I don't care. It doesn't bother me. Because he's here. He's my best friend, and I'm not stupid, and I know that he's going soon. 

"Are you scared?" I ask him.

"No. I'm just tired." Bucky says quietly.

"You've fought good Buck." I say quietly.

"I'm worried about Steve." Bucky says. "That I'm going to die and he's going to lose hope. That he will lose all hope that he has any chance at beating his cancer." Bucky says sadly.

"I'll take care of him, Buck." I say.

"Promise?" Bucky asks. He holds out his pinky. We shake on it. "What do you think it's going to be like?" Bucky asks quietly.

"Not sure. I wouldn't mind it if there's nothing after. If life just ends and that's it." I say quietly.

"But do you think that's how it is?" Bucky asks

"No. I guess deep down i'd like to think that there's an after. And I guess, more than that, I'd like to think my parents will be there with me." I say quietly.

"I'll say hi to them for you. Gotta apologize for killing them." Bucky says with a genuine laugh. I laugh too.

"Thanks Buck." I say with a smile. "I'm sure they'll be excited to meet you." 

"When I get there, I'll be sure to give God the middle finger for letting us all get sick." Bucky says with a pained, watery laugh.

"Be sure to ask him why we couldn't have super powers to fix all this." I say smiling.


	8. Chapter 8

The nurses leave Bucky's room, after giving him a high dose of morphine. They all say that there is a pretty good chance the medications will make him fall asleep. And that he won't wake up. His parents aren't here. He explicitly told the nurses that he didn't want them to be here when he passed. Didn't want them to remember him dying, or never forget the way his weak lungs sounded as they creaked out his last breath.

Steve's here now. Bucky is in his bed, and Steve's in a wheelchair on his left. I'm in a chair on his right. Steve, is taking Bucky on a grand tour of his sketchbook. There are plenty of drawings of Bucky in there, since that's who he's around the most. And Bucky, he looks so proud. Honored. That Steve cared enough about him to eternalize him in the pages of his sketchbook.

And Steve, he's showing it to him like a little kid, begging for approval. 

"Steve, you're gonna get out of here, and you're gonna change the world with your creativity." Bucky says with a smile. "You can literally do anything that you want, don't let anyone tell you different." 

"Thanks buck." Steve says with a smile.

"I'll see if I can pull some strings up there and get you the job you want drawing for Disney." Bucky laughs.

It's not long before Bucky falls asleep. And within twenty minutes, his heart just stops. There's nothing dramatic like in the movies, where he wakes up and offers some sage advice and then dies mid sentence before divulging the location of some buried treasure six miles off the coast of Detroit. He just dies. Plain and simple. One minute he's breathing pretty slow, and then he just isn't. He's gone. And it's not scary, or sad, it's peaceful. Like Bucky has finished everything he needed to accomplish in his line, and now it's just over. He gets to rest now. And in what is probably considered a twisted way, I'm happy for him. I'm happy for him that he doesn't have to fight anymore.

I take Steve, by the hand and lead him into Bruce and I's room, just as Bucky's family starts to arrive. The nurses have moved a smaller, third bed into the room, for when this happened. I take the smaller bed. I sit down next to Steve on my bed for a little while, were both silent. Neither of us crying, just sitting silently. 

The next day, Nick is in our class, and he starts off this long bullshit filled speech about how we "lost a good fighter last night"

"By now I'm sure most of you have heard that James Barnes is no longer with us. He was a good friend to all of you, and I know that losing him, our hospital has lost a good fighter. But more than that I think you've all lost a mentor, and friend. Barnes was a good kid. He fought hard, and I think he would want you all to grab your bootstraps and keep pushing, instead of being sad that he's gone." Nick says.

"Nick, that's bullshit. Bucky would have been the first to say that it's okay to grieve, and that grieving takes time. He didn't do any of that bootstrap shit. Were all here for a shitty ass reason, and at this point, I don't think any of us have boots left to grab the straps of." Peter Parker says quickly. I smile at him.

"Bucky would want us to be honest about how we're feeling." Natasha says quietly. 

"He'd want us to be there for each other." Peter Quill says softly. 

"You guys are right, and I'm sorry. You know what? Let's cancel class today. I'm going to go grab the hospital therapist and a couple more staff, and we're going to have a group session. It would do you guys a lot more good than reading another chapter of that Shakespeare shit." Nick says before leaving the room.

"Hell, we've gone from reading to a group session, and if I'm honest I would much rather read than talk about how I'm feeling." I say with a laugh.

"Tony, how are you doing?" Peggy says, entering the room.

"Fine." I say quickly.

Pepper Potts, the hospital Therapist specifically assigned to deal with the res kids, walks in carrying a small clipboard with a pen. She's all ready to take notes on all the concerning shit any of us have to say, with little to no regard that Bucky hasn't even been dead for 24 hours yet.

"Steve, how are you doing?" Pepper asks, after sitting in the chair and crossing her legs which are barely covered by her too tight pencil skirt.

"I watched him die. How do you think I'm doing?" Steve says with a sarcastic and pointed laugh.

"Was he in pain when he went?" Wanda asks abruptly.

"No. He just fell asleep and then it was over." I say, lying about the pain. I don't want to make everyone else feel bad, or feel uncomfortable. Steve nods. 

"I miss him." Steve says quietly. "It hasn't even been a day, and I miss him, and I'll never see him again."

"You'll see him at the funeral." Peggy brings up 

"No, I'll see his cold, lifeless body at that damn funeral. Bucky is gone." Steve argues.

"What do you think happens to Bucky now?" Pepper asks, trying to prompt the group.

"If he's lucky, he just ceases to exist." I say quietly.

"Why do you say that, Tony?" Pepper asks.

"Because Bucky was tired. And he deserves to just rest." I say, eyes starting to water.

"Tony, are you tired?" Pepper asks

"I don't even know anymore." I admit quietly.

"You've lost a lot of important people recently Tony. You have to be feeling something." Peggy says with a sense of genuine sympathy.

"I'm just done. I don't care anymore. What's the point of getting a transplant, if I don't have anyone to live for?" I say, crying.

"Live for us." Natasha suggests.

"That's bullshit. You have to find a reason to stay alive for yourself." Peter Parker interjects.

"I miss them." I say quietly.

"You should have cared more when they were still here." Peter Quill says under his breath.

"Quill, that's not appropriate." Nick says sternly.

"You had your chance to love every one of them, and you didn't give a shit about any of them until they stopped breathing." Quill says. "None of you gave a shit about Bucky until he died, and now all he means to you is getting out of having to do class while you pretend to be depressed."

"I loved him." Steve says just above a whisper. But everyone hears


	9. Chapter 9

"How was the relationship between you and your father?" Pepper asks, sitting in her office, across from me in an absolutely intimidating armchair.

"Don't you want me to go lay down on a couch or something?" I ask, raising my eyebrows.

"Only if you really want to. That's up to you. But no matter where you sit in this room, I still need you to answer my question." Pepper says, as she crosses her arms over her chest. And listen I'm not a therapist or anything, but from what I understand she should at least be trying to look as little intimidating as possible. She's shit at that. Honestly I wonder if she even tries.

"It could have been better." I say with a sigh.

My dad, I think he wanted to like me at first. You know, like I have a lot of memories from when I was really little, of him and I spending a lot of time together. I remember him and I playing. I remember him listening to me, rambling and imagining things and I remember how proud he looked. I remember him looking at me like I was the coolest thing, and if I'm honest, that's the only times I remember him looking at me like that. That's the last time I really recall him looking at me like I meant something to him. He used to tell me all the time that I was just like him. And then, I guess I wasn't anymore. 

Once I started getting old enough to really make my own decisions, especially once those choices stopped being in harmony with his own. If was like a light switch got flicked somewhere in his brain and all of the sudden he didn't see me as having any real potential. All of the sudden along the line, I wasn't worth it to him anymore. I didn't have the value of him thinking I could be just like him, that I could take over his company. All of the sudden I didn't mean anything to him anymore. And honestly, I can't place the moment that I went wrong. 

I have my guesses though.

It could have been when I brought home that first report card in the seventh grade that had anything other than A's on it. He's been pretty pissed. 

It could have been the time that he asked me if I wanted to go to work with him, and I told him no, because I wanted to go and play with my friends. He never asked me again. I was only five or six at that time.

It could have been when he gave up on me being a genius, and tried to get me involved in sports. I was pretty good at them actually. I did well in football, and was the captain of the wrestling team. Screwed up the wrestling gig though, after I quite literally screwed one of the team managers and got kicked off the team.

In all reality, I think the moment that my dad gave up on me, was when I got sick. Because he's this absolute genius, and he is good for fixing things, and all the sudden he couldn't fix me. He couldn't fix my shitty attitude. He couldn't fix the fact that I passed up going to work with him that one day, and that for a moment there I had friends. He couldn't fix the fact that although I finally was good at something when it came to sports, I still messed that up to. And worst of all, my dad absolutely couldn't fix the fact that my heart is a literal piece of shit. He couldn't fix the fact that chances used to be pretty good that I would die long before he did. 

I guess he lucked out in the end.

"Did he abuse you?" Pepper asks insensitively.

"He used to beat me when I didn't work out with him in the morning during football season. " I say with another sigh.

I remember once, during football season when I woke up pretty sick. I'd been throwing up, all night long, and I'm sure my dad had heard me. My room was right beneath his and mom's. He still came into my room at five in the morning, just like every other day, turned on my light and started screaming asking why I hadn't gotten up yet. Why I wasn't already in the home gym downstairs. And when I told him I wasn't feeling well, he grabbed me out of bed, held me against the wall, and pummeled me. 

He fractured my collarbone that time, but when I went to the school nurse about it, I insisted it was something I'd gotten during a game and had only just really started to notice it was hurting.

She didn't even question me. 

No one did. 

See, dad had a great reputation, and because of that, even if I had told more than just the one girl I did tell, no one would have believed me. Not even for a second. Not even my own mom.

"Did you ever tell your mom what was going on?" Pepper asks

"Yeah. She didn't believe me though." I say with a weak, sarcastic laugh.

I did tell her. I told her, when he was trying to kick me out of the house. I told her, and I was sitting there sobbing, and she didn't so much as flinch. I told her everything and she still made me leave. Handed me a trash bag to put it my clothes into. 

I slept in a shed a few blocks away. 

For a week.

I finally told someone what was going on. And she came and picked me up from school, and took me back to her house. I stayed there right up until I got kicked off the team and my parents forced me to come home. Didn't really talk to the girl after that, which was shitty, but being around her reminded me of too many times that were just way too much to think about.

"Tony, I'm sorry." Pepper says quietly.

"Not your fault." I say quickly.

"Who all knows?" Pepper asks.

"You're the only living one." I say with a laugh. "Aside from the girl that I stayed with. Bucky knew too."

"Are you mad at your dad?" Pepper asks.

"No." I say, and that's when I start crying.

Because no matter all the shit he put me through, I can't be mad at him.


	10. Chapter 10

Nick makes me move into Steve's room, a couple days after Bucky's funeral. The hospital gets a new resident, as they always do. His name is Clint. He's got some crazy autoimmune disease and he happens to be deaf on top of that. And Steve, it's not that Steve doesn't get along with Clint, it's just that he's having a hard time trying to get to know him, I guess, because the last roommate he got to know, died anyway. And Steve took that really hard. It also happens to be the first weekend since his surgery, that Steve has to have chemotherapy, and mixing his shitty immune system with Clint's just isn't the best idea. Which means in turn, that Clint is lucking out, getting the room with Bruce. Essentially he's rooming by himself, considering that Bruce literally doesn't so much as blink. 

It's two in the morning when I wake up to hear Steve screaming. There are nurses all around him, hooking him up to morphine to try to get him to knock out. Phantom pain, is what Nick keeps saying. Which I guess is when Steve's leg hurts. Like the leg that isn't attached to him anymore. It's painful, physically and psychologically. Because he knows the leg is gone, but for that time, it's like it's still there, and it feels like it's on fire. 

"Steve, once the wound is healed a bit more, we can start working on different massages to cope with the phantom pain." Nick insists quietly. 

Peggy's there and she's debating if the chemo might have set off the phantom pains. "Tony, if you'd like, we can get you a different room to sleep in tonight." Peggy suggests.

"It's okay. I'll stay with him." I say quietly.

His nurses leave, and I sit next to him on the bed. 

"Steve, are you doing okay?" I ask quietly.

"It hurts." Steve says through tears.

"I know it does buddy. Bucks used to hurt too in the beginning. He used to massage it with a toothbrush, and he always told the nurses that it made things better, but I think what you've gotta understand is that it's not going to ever just stop happening. It's always gonna hurt sometimes. You'll just learn how to handle it eventually." I say honestly.

"I miss him." Steve says quietly. "And missing him hurts so much more than the damn phantom."

"I know you do." I say softly.

"I loved him." Steve says quietly. "You know last week, we kissed."

"He loved you too Steve. He always will. Dying doesn't stop something as intense as that kind of love." I sympathize.

"Do you want to tell me about you and him?" I ask quietly.

"No, I don't think I will." Steve says with the first smile I've seen on him since Bucky died.

And honestly, I didn't know that they loved each other. I didn't know they had a fling, or that either of them were attracted to males. But I think it was better to tell Steve that I knew. To make him think that I understood. To make him think I had even the slightest inclination that they had something special. 

Although, I suppose that if Bucky was willing to move things forward, things must have been special. I know a lot of guys who will date anyone who seems even vaguely interested. I know guys who will date anyone, just to say that they are dating someone. I know guys, who will date girls just to get what they want and then dump them. But Bucky, he's different. He cares and he doesn't just date anyone. He's picky. 

And my goodness, I am glad that he found someone as good as Steve to love before he died. I'm glad that he found someone like Steve, who can see all the tiny, and most beautiful details of people and appreciate them. Who can see the bad things, and not ignore them, but see the beauty in them. 

And hell, the worst thing Bucky could have done to Steve was die. But damn, if he had any choice, his line would have been just as long as Steve's. It would have gone on forever.

"He really liked the drawings you did of him." I say quietly.

"You showed him?" Steve asks, surprised.

"No, you did, remember?" I say with a little smile. "Bucky loved them. He liked seeing what you thought he would have looked like before he got sick. Hell, I guess he mostly, just really liked you."

Later on in the day, I push Steve's wheelchair into class. It's the first time we've had a regular day of class since Bucky died, and while I can't say I was really in the mood to hear some tutor in scrubs drone on and on about how awful humanity was during the second world war, Steve's genuinely interested, and I think it's good to give him that distraction.

And I guess, I had been focusing so hard on Bucky, that I didn't really notice that everyone else was having a hard time too. Peter Quill, he's on oxygen all the time now, which looks kinda funny on him. He's a big guy, and I mean, it's not like illness discriminates, because anyone can get sick, you know, but he just doesn't look like someone who would be sick. He doesn't look like someone who would need to be on oxygen all the time. He looks like your typical football quarterback. Like the typical big guy in school, who should be in school, playing all the ladies that even glance in his direction. He looks like someone who should be out in the world, living. But instead he's here watching kids his own age puke their brains out and eventually die. Great huh? 

I sit next to Peter Quill in class, between him and Steve. Peters not doing so hot. His doctors are pumping mucus out of him on the daily now. There's a tube, in the side of his chest, constantly draining it out of his lungs so that he can breathe. 

To like keep up moral or whatever, the hospital plans these cute little activities for us, so that we don't go absolutely nuts or anything. Or like sign ourselves out, and just run away. So they plan stupid activities for us to make us feel like we're actual teenagers again. Most of the time, including tonight, they put on a movie night, with popcorn. A lot of movie companies will release their movies into children's hospitals at the same time movies go into theaters. So tonight we're watching the newest star Wars movie, and all the guys are pretty stoked. Steve comments that Kylo Ren looks like a better sculpted version of Bucky, which makes everyone laugh.

Wanda eats a good amount of popcorn because I guess someone told her that there are like no calories in it. The butter and salt can't help, but we're all so glad to see her eating that we don't even mention it to her. None of us would even dare.


	11. Chapter 11

In our group therapy session the next day, Pepper is quick to start firing questions at Clint, who communicates via sign language during group with the help of an interpreter, provided by his insurance. Outside of therapy, Clint mostly just reads our lips, and he can talk back, it just sounds a little bit funny. Slower, with hyper pronounced sounds in odd places in some words. 

"How are you doing today Clint?" Pepper asks, facing him directly so that he can read her lips. 

He gives her a thumbs up.

From what Nat, who has the biggest crush on Clint that I have ever seen, was saying, Clint has a super rare autoimmune disease called Behcets Disease. I guess it's a lot like Lupus if it had a threesome with Crohn's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis. So basically, when his body goes into a flare up, his immune system doesn't just stop at attacking blood cells like it's supposed to, it attacks his entire body. Vital organs. His eyes, which is why he wears thick Ray Ban glasses, it attacks his digestive system and gives him gnarly ulcers, and his mouth is usually full of ulcers too. It can also affect his brain, which could potentially kill him, but that's super unlikely I guess. His doctors have him here on an experimental chemotherapy treatment. I didn't even know that doctors used Chemo on people who don't have cancer, but I guess the medical theory is that if they essentially destroy his immune system until there's literally nothing left of it, then maybe when his immune system builds back up, it will come back healthy without any evidence of disease.

The shitty thing is that there's almost no chance that his disease will kill him. So he could ultimately go on chemo cycles every five years or so for the rest of his life. That sucks, you know, because most of us, we all have things that can be cured. Things that will go away, or kill us. But he's just stuck. 

If it was me, I think I would rather have terminal cancer than have to have some disease like that where I still end up getting cancer treatment for the rest of my damn life.

Natasha sits close to Clint in group. He's only been here for a few days, and him and Nat have really hit it off. He's like, teaching her sign language and everything. It's pretty cute, I gotta say. It's cool to see her with someone who makes her happy and treats her well. Because I've heard stories about the guys she has dated in the past, and most of those relationships weren't healthy. And while, both Nat and Clint are pretty sick, under all other terms, things look like they're going well.

Dating at the hospital is an odd thing. Because it's not like you can go out on dates, or even have sex. (The nurses can totally tell when we're having sex, because our heart rates escalate insanely. Trust me, no one likes the nurses running into the room thinking you're having a heart attack when in reality you've gotten another resident into your bed with you. There was this kid who used to stay here, nice kid from the Bronx, named T'Challa, but we always called him T. He was here waiting for a liver, and he used to get girls in all the time. Girls who would come to visit him from school. Hell of a guy. And he made it out too. Lucked out and someone a few floors down in the hospital died, and was a donor so he got the liver he needed. But he used to give the nurses a run for their money. Nick and him finally established an agreement that if he was having sex, he needed to hang a sock on the door.

I swear there was constantly a sock on his door.

What a guy.

Anyway, dating here is complicated. But I've seen people make it work. A lot of us will go have dates down at the food court. 

Because, you know, hospital macaroni and cheese is the perfect date food.

Steve's handling things a lot better. He spends a lot of time in Peppers office, processing his emotions with her. He's also starting physical therapy this week, so that he can get his leg ready to start using a prosthetic. He's making a lot of progress.

Wanda is doing better too. She's eating and has put on a few pounds. The hospital is talking about sending her to a more relaxed program catered towards eating disorders somewhere in upstate New York, because it just makes more sense for her to be somewhere like that. She's be a lot better off somewhere like that too, because the nurses there would be a lot better fit for her needs. And they have a lot more experience with her, and a lot higher success rate.

I am sitting down in the commons area, which is fitted with some of the most comfortable couches on God's green earth.

"How have you been?" Peter Parker asks after sitting down next to me.

"I've been doing alright. How are you?" I ask 

"I've been okay. How's Steve been?" Peter asks, showing genuine concern.

"He's been okay. I guess that him and Bucky were dating, so losing him has been really hard for Steve." I say quietly. "How's Quill?"

"He got his transplant scheduled for next week." Peter says with a deep sigh.

"How's your brain slug doing?" I ask with a wink, referring to his tumor.

"It's stable. The slug isn't growing, or moving anywhere else in my body for now." Peter says with a smile. "The new guy seems pretty chill. I heard he's joining the chemo crew."

"Yeah. I feel bad for him." I say quickly.

"I don't. He's got Nat wrapped around his finger." Peter says laughing.

"You're right." I say smiling.

"There's not a chance either of them are going to leave this hospital with their virginity still in tact." Peter says laughing.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that its been so long and that this chapter us so short. College is hard and i am so tired. But I have a 4.0 I'm my midterm so im doing good. Hope to update more frequently now that im adjusted to school.

The thing is, kids grow up thinking nothing bad will happen to them while they're young. They're little and maybe they watch their grandparents get sick, but it makes sense since they're old. The only lady down the street died but it's okay in their eyes because everyone is assuring them they lived a good long life. Even in the movies, kids never die. You grow up thinking you're invincible, kind of like superman. And yeah maybe sometimes things will come at you but nothing could ever possibly hurt you, because you're young. And then, the world comes along, slaps you in the face and proves you wrong. It slaps you in the face as a high school kid with heart problems, and the adults, who somehow missed out on these health issues drag you to a hospital to fix it amongst other kids that the world screwed over. Kids who have it even worse than you do. I remember getting into the hospital and being so genuinely depressed. I felt like my entire childhood had been ripped away and that i had been cheated out of my high school experience. And then I remember meeting Bucky. I remember meeting him not long after his arm had been chopped off. He knew he was going to die. At least I had a chance.

The worst thing about his funeral was the idea that he was way too young to be dead. Before him, the youngest dead people I had seen had been my parents and at the time even they had seemed too young to be dead. But Bucky, he was my age. And he should have gotten so much more time to wreak havoc on the planet. He should have been able to grow and learn and make stupid mistakes. Take out a student loan to pay for college that he'd never pay off. Buy car. Go to his high school homecoming dance. But instead life gave him different. Instead, he died. Life sucks sometimes and it sure as hell isn't fair. Or at least it wasn't fair to Bucky.

It's not fair to any of the kids here.

Steve is doing a little bit better. His stump has healed enough that he can do the massages to help with the phantom pain, his doctors have him fitted for a prosthetic, which he's testing out today. I'm going to his appointment with him for moral support. I guess that when It comes to walking on a prosthetic, you basically have to re-learn how to walk. And it's hard.

The doctor in charge of the prosthetic, Hank Pym, is a kind enough man. He's sitting there, while Steve is perched up on the examination table, and Pym is manhandling his stump. Steve is open with him about how hes feeling. Steve admits to Pym that the incision scar is still really tender. He admits that he still experiences the phantom pain on a daily basis, and on a scale of one to ten Steve rates the phantom pain as a solid four. Knowing Steve, even though I havent known him long, if he says it's a four, it's probably more realistically even an eight or nine, possibly a ten. Pyms sitting there, with Steves stump resting on his knee while he looks at the incision. It's perfectly straight, and while still a little red, it's looking a lot better than it had been right after the surgery. Pym pulls out a briefcase with the artificial leg they have set up for Steve to try along with the slip cover to put in between to make it more comfortable and less wiggly.

He pulls out what looks like a silicone tube sock, and begins rolling up Steves sweatpants. "Alright Steve put this on. You want to make sure there aren't any wrinkles or creases. Those can create sores if you arent careful." Doctor Pym says educationally as though he is teaching a college class: amputee 1010. Steve nodded, pulling the liner over his stump, and then the foam on too of the liner, struggling to get it on. 

"It's tight." Steve complains.

"It's supposed to be. If it was loose the prosthetic would be unable to suction to your leg." Pym says explaining patiently.

Pym slides the prosthetic, a bionic looking contraption, into Steves leg, and I am quick to notice Steve's discomfort, as the prosthetic makes contact with the still-tender scar. 

"You alright man?" I ask quietly.

"Yeah. It just pinched for a second. I'm okay." Steve says reassuringly. 

"Alright let's get you standing." Pym says showing signs of excitement. 

Pym stands in front of Steve, and holds out Steves crutches, handing him to Steve before walking to the other side of the room and looking at Steve expectantly. Steve puts his weight down on his prosthetic, and instantly buckles down to the ground with a scream, clutching at his leg. Pym is walking to his aide, but i'm there first.

"Hey buddy are you alright?" I say down on the ground on Steves level. There's swear on Steve's forehead as he nods. Pym and I help him back onto the table.

"What the hell was that?" I ask looking At Pym expecting an answer.

"Sometimes if the protective pads arent situated perfectly it can cause some discomfort. " Pym says.

With the second attempt after the sleeves have been adjusted, Steve's walking. And hes so excited, there are tears falling down his face.

"I'm doing it!" Steve announces excitedly.

"Hell Yeah you are!" I smile.


	13. 13

I think the most human, that people ever feel is as they watch someone they love die, and that's the hardest thing to have to feel. It's two in the morning on a Monday, when the doctors start prepping Peter Quill for his lung transplant. And transplants they are a beautiful thing. As someone who is waiting for one, I see the beauty in them. I see the beauty in the new life. The beauty in someone giving their life. But I also see the pain. I see, and recognise that the donor, they have a family too. They have friends. They had a life. And now, they are giving it away.

They had had an eighteen year old male come into the Emergency Room the evening before, after a severe injury followed by a grand mal seizure at a wrestling match. He came in, with two girls, rather than his parents. From what I understand, his parents had been mad at him, and had kicked him out of their home a few days before. His parents hadn't been to see the wrestling match. They weren't there when he was injured. They didn't come when he asked them to come to the Emergency Room. But, if his parents had known, that an hour into the Emergency Room, He was going to die, they would have done anything, anything in the world, to be there. But they weren't. Those girls were. He was dating one of the girls, and the other was her best friend. And those girls had the courage to drive him here, no matter how scared they were. Those girls were incredible enough people that they stuck by the kid, and geld his hand through all of it. They didn't get squeamish, when they saw him bleeding. They didn't cry. They just acted as tough as possible. Even when, all of the sudden, the kid had a brain aneurysm, right in front of them at the hospital. From what Nick was saying, even as he stopped breathing, and they lost all signs of brain activity in him, those girls didn't leave his room. Those girls, were there when their best friend, and the other girls boyfriend, does. I've heard the scenario explained a few times over the last few hours, nurses talking about how bad they feel for the kids parents. About how awful it must have been for him to go, and die, so suddenly. And listen, I understand it is absolutely awful. But damn, I hope there is someone looking out for those girls. 

"Are the girls still here?" I ask Nick quietly.

"Yeah. In the waiting room. They cant be in with him now that his parents are here, according to policy." Nick says routinely.

"They're just in the waiting room alone?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

Nick nods. "Listen Stark I know it seems harsh, but he should be with his parents."

"His parents left him!" Steve argues. I hadn't even known he had been paying any attention. 

"Can we go sit with them?" I ask quietly. 

"You can if you promise not to be an ass." Nick taunts.

"Promise." Steve says, rolling his eyes.

Steve and i get down the elevator, to the floor Nick says the girls will be on. It doesn't take long to figure out which ones they are. They're sitting alone in a corner of the waiting room. Holding each other while They sob. At the end of the hall, from where they are sitting, you can see into the friends room.It has to be hell for them. Steve hobbles up on his crutches, and sits on one side of the girls, and I sit on the other. Sandwiching them in. They are so caught up in their agonizing grief, that they don't even notice Steve or I.

"Hey. What hes doing, is incredible." Steve says quietly. One of the girls jumps slightly and nods.

"My names Tony." I say quietly. I look over to Steve. "This is Steve." 

"Nebula." The one girl says quietly. "He was my boyfriend." She says.

"He still is." The other girl says softly. Her name, she will soon reveal, is Gamora. Which is weird as hell, but not much weirder than Nebula. Must have some crazy hippy parents. Farmers i bet. 

"He seemed okay. Just a couple hours ago we were all laughing, and even after he got hurt he seemed okay. I could tell he was in pain, but he wasn't supposed to die. He's way too young to die." Gamora says through tears.

"Hes such a good kid. The kind of guy who would do anything for anyone and never once have a mean thing to think about them while he did it." Nebula says lovingly.

"You know what's happening to him right?" Steve says quietly. "He's going to save lives. Those doctors are going to take him back, and they'll be soft, and gentle, and they are going to use parts of him to save so many people." Steve says gently. The girls both nod. They know what is happening to him. They just don't want it to be real.

"But the coolest part, is going to come before that. Here, when someone is an organ donor, they do this Hero Walk, on the way to the operating room. All the doctors, and nurses and the entire hospital staff, line the halls on the path to the operating room, and they will salute him while the nurses, and his parents push him by." I say honestly. "It's the coolest thing ive ever seen."

"I wasn't ready to say goodbye to him." Nebula says quietly. Gamora nods her head, signifying that she hadn't been ready either. No one is ever ready to say goodbye. 

"He's still breathing. They'll have him intubated, and I am willing to bet my right leg, which is the only one I have left ladies, that his parents will let you say goodbye to him. You just have to ask." Steve says.

"They said we couldn't go back there." Nebula says quietly, sounding defeated.

"I guarantee his parents wont say no to you guys." I say quietly.

The girls get up, and Steve walks them to their friends door. The boys parents, rush to the door, letting them inside, and holding them. The boys mother, a small woman with bleached blonde hair, and his father, a much larger, balding man with a friendly splotchy face, hold the girls as they sob. Nebula, the one who had been dating Drax, goes down to his level, looking at him on his bed.

"He looks so peaceful." Gamora points out lovingly.

"He would have wanted this. He would have wanted to help people." His dad says. Then the nurses come, to bring his bed into the operating room.

His parents, and the girls, help push his bed to the operating doors, as the nurses, and doctors salute him. The last thing I hear them say, is;

"You were the best thing that ever happened to me." Nebula says quietly as they begin the walk.

"Thank you for loving our son." His mother says, hugging her.

Nebula starts blasting "welcome to the black parade" on her phone. His parents smile.

If Bucky had been here he would have lost his shit.


	14. Chapter 14

The doors close, and Nebula and Gamora are left in the hall. Surrounded by all the employees at the hospital, but certainly never feeling quite so alone. Nebula walks back to Steve and I, and sinks back down to her knees. 

"Hes gone." She says quietly. 

In all reality, they will keep Drax alive for the first part of surgery. They have to, in order to give Peter the best chance with his lungs. But, in the same regard, the next time the girls see Drax, he will be dead. They won't ever see him alive again. 

Steve puts a comforting hand on Gamora's shoulder, as she comes to sit next to us again. Hes good for that, you know. Hes the kind of guy that you can almost rely on to comfort you whenever you need it most. 

Steve looks up, and around the room, and points out a crowd of people sitting on the other side of the waiting room. "Do you want to see something amazing?" Steve asks. The girls shrug. 

"Watch those doors on the other end." I say quietly. Those particular doors lead to Labor and Delivery, and based on the excitement of the crowd sitting close to the door, and doing their best to peek through the crack between the doors, that's a family waiting for a baby.

Within a few minutes the doors open, to reveal a tired man, with deep bags under his eyes and plently of tired stubble, smiling from ear to ear. An older woman, presumably his mother, looks to him expectantly.

"I have a daughter!" He says with pure excitement.

The family cheers loudly. 

"Maggie is doing good! Baby is healthy! Six pounds!" He says quickly and excitedly. His mother hugs him. So does his father.

"Did you see how excited he was?" Steve asks the girls. They nod quietly. "When i am really down, I come down here and watch things like that. Hospitals are kinda weird, because it's the one place where people come to die and come to be born." Steve says wisely.

"The circle of life starts and ends here for most people." I say quietly.

"Drax wasn't supposed to die yet." Nebula says quietly. There are tears falling down her face again. "His parents should have been here."

"Why werent they?" I ask quietly.

"His parents kicked him out on Thursday. They were mad at him. They didn't even really have a good reason why. They just started screaming at him, and gave him a garbage bag and five minutes to get out before they told him they would call the police." Nebula says quietly.

"He called me crying at about 1 in the morning that night asking me to come pick him up. I drove as fast as I could to go get him, and when i got to his parents' house, he was sitting on the front porch with the garbage bag. All the lights in the house were off and they'd locked every door." Nebula continues.

"You know what he put in that garbage bag?" She asks beginning to sob.

None of us answer.

"He packed his wrestling gear, and his church suit. That was it. Not even a pair of socks." She says through tears. "I brought him back to my house, and my dad, he answered the door and just hugged him, and helped him downstairs." 

"What happened tonight?" Steve asks quietly.

"It was just supposed to be a wrestling match." Gamora whispers quietly. "We knew who he was going against before the match and Neb and i knew Drax was gonna get his ass kicked. So before the match, we went to the store, and bought some get well soon balloons and instead of a balloon weoght we held them down with a big ass bottle of ibuprofen." She continues.

"We were sitting at the top of the bleachers, and everything was going good, Drax won his first round and then about half way through the second, all the sudden the other guy just flipped Drax over really quick and pinned him hard and fast on his chest." Nebula says quietly.

"We could hear him scream. And hear him breathing from the top of the bleachers. Ans i just started praying so hard that he would be okay. And after I finished we stood up and walked across the gym, and went and say next to him while the nurses worked on him." Gamora says.

"I held his hand." Nebula says, breaking down in tears. "I didn't let go."

"After the match, Drax asked us if we would drive him to the Emergency Room, and you know, I couldn't say no. And we got into my car and he called his mom and asked her to come to the hospital with us and that fucking bitch said no. And we were driving, and he started fucking coughing up blood all over. It's all over my windshield and my car. and we walked him into the er once we got here, and fucking lied to the nutse and said we were his sisters so that they would let us go back with him. " Gamora cries. 

"So then we were just sitting here with him, and I climbed into his hospital bed next to him, and just laid my head on his chest and about a half hour in he said his head was hurting really bad, and all the machines started beeping like crazy. And then he died. And them nurses they came in with this machine and ripped his damn shirt, he fucking loved that shirt, and they put these metal plates on him and brought him back, and then they made us leave the room. Said he died three more times and that there wasn't any oxygen going to his brain anymore." Nebula sobs. "And then his parents walked in acting all sad and bullshit, and fucking had the nerve to tell the doctors to get us out. That we had no relation to him. But those fucking bastards didn't care about him half as much as we did."

His parents walk out of the hospital room after that, glance at the girls and keep walking. 

Nebula looks furious.

"You didn't fucking deserve him!" She screams. "You always made him feel like such a piece of shit. You didn't deserve him. He was such a fucking good kid. He fucking died. He died with us. Not you. And damnit you had a lot of fucking nerve, letting your kids best friends take him to the emergancy room to die. " Nebula says through sobbed tears. She's shaking. Drax's dad grabs his wife's hand, and they walk out the hospital doors, with Drax's wrestling sweatshirt in hand.


	15. Chapter 15

Christmas in the hospital is magical. The staff go all out to make sure that we all feel extra appreciated, loved and supported. They like the halls of the residential floor with Christmas lights, and cover the nurses station with lights, and a huge bucket of Christmas candies. Each patient has their own miniature Christmas tree next to their bed, and the nurses decorate each of them. In the waiting room, there's a larger Christmas tree, which is where all the donated gifts from the community accumulate. The most beautiful thing to see at the hospital is the way the scene looks at night, when the fluorescent lights are turned off, and the multicolored lights twinkle from the hallway. It's stunning in ways I can't adequately explain. 

Christmas is hard for the people here. It's lonely not being healthy enough to be at home for Christmas. There are a lot of us, who won't even live to see the next Christmas and we know it, and that idea looms also. There are plenty who are missing people. People who are dead, who live far away. Missing people gets harder at the holidays. It's hard feeling alone, during the holidays which are designed to be spent together, and it's harder to come to terms with the idea of expiration.

It's odd celebrating something as normal and seemingly mundane as Christmas in the hospital when we're used to celebrating things like transplants, and remissions. The celebration of Christmas seems small in comparison to Quill getting a successful lung transplant. He's home now. And we were all so happy for him, but I would be lying if I didn't say I was extremely jealous. In the hospital we celebrate things like Nat, starting a new type of Chemotherapy that's actually been improving her levels. We celebrated as she was finally well enough for a bone marrow transplant. We celebrated as the doctors found no evidence of cancer in her body. We threw her the biggest party imaginable. Bigger than any Christmas party could ever aspire to become. She doesn't have to celebrate here anymore either. And originally she had promised that she would come back to celebrate with us, but we made her promise she wouldn't. We made her promise she would never come back. That she would go on to live a happy, healthy and normal life. That she would just be okay.

Not everyone is okay. As expected. Peter Parker, is starting to receive Hospice care. Nick says there's a good chance he won't make it to Christmas, let alone the new year. Bruce's family and medical team are starting to discuss the idea of pulling his plug. His doctors don't think he has any chance of waking up anymore. Steve is doing his best. He's starting to master walking around on his prosthetic, with a less noticeable limp as time goes on. His cancer has spread. It's in his pelvis now, which means they have to put him on even stronger chemotherapy, because it's not like they can just chop off his pelvis. I think he's doing better though. I think he'll be okay. 

Clint is handling his treatments well, and his disease is responding the way his doctors want it to. Wanda has been continually improving too. 

As for me, I'm still on the transplant list. Nothing's changed health wise. I reconnected with that girl from school. The one who let me stay with her when my parents kicked me out after i was kicked off the football team. Everything with Drax and those two girls really got me thinking about her. About how good to me she had been. About how much she genuinely cared about me. About how wrong i had been to push her out of my life. She had done her best. She had done everything she could do, above and beyond what anyone else ever would have done for me, and i had pushed her away. I pushed her out of my life as soon as things started looking up because I didn't want to see her and remember when things weren't okay. I pushed away the only person in my life who had never even considered leaving, and I can't imagine how much hurt I caused her. I can't imagine all the nights she sat and wondered where she went wrong. All the nights she wondered why on earth I hated her. I couldn't begin to count the amount of tears that she cried on my behalf. 

It was early in the morning, one of those nights where I was thinking so much that I couldn't sleep, when I realised I owed her an apology. I scrolled through my phone, and went into Snapchat, knowing it would notify I was typing, and how long it was going to take me to say what i needed to say.

"May, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I left you out of nowhere and that I didn't even give you a reason why. I'm sorry for all the times that you tried to reach out to me and I couldn't even be decent enough to respond. I'm sorry that I didn't even care enough about you to tell you how much I cared about you. You were my best friend. You meant everything to me. You cared about me when absolutely no one else did and I didn't act like I cared but i need you to know how much it meant to me. I need you to know that I don't hate you. I need you to know that the things you did helped me to hold on. More than anything I need you to know how sorry I am. I need you to know that I know that what i did to you was wrong. I need you to know that you didn't do anything wrong. It was All on me and i am so sorry that i let you ever think any of this was your fault. I need you to know that you deserved and still deserve so much better and i am so glad that you've found that with Happy. I'm so glad that you've found someone who appreciates all the love you give and I'm so sorry that i took you for granted. "

"It's okay Tony. I'm not going to sit here and act like you didn't hurt me, because pretending you didn't wont do either of us any favors. The way things ended with you sucked. It was awful and it hurt me so badly. But I forgave you. I've never hated you. Not for any of it. I hope you're okay. I heard about your parents, and I am so sorry. I hope you understand that just because there were things you could have done better with me, doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean I don't care about you. I always have. I think I always will. I hope you're doing okay. I hope you find lasting health and happiness. I've prayed for you every night." May sends.

It's an hour later, an hour after May and I have stopped talking, when Nick comes into my room suddenly. 

"Tony, we found you a donor."


End file.
